Exploring Twitter’s New Custom Timeline Feature

Earlier this month, Twitter announced a new feature they were rolling out called “Custom Timelines.” This new feature will enable users to compile lists of Tweets within TweetDeck and embed them, share them, or link to them.

To wrap your mind around it, it is kind of like a Twitter list, but instead of people it is for Tweets.

Getting it setup is easy, log into TweetDeck and get situated.

Click on the giant + (plus) sign on the right hand side and you will see a very familiar box pop up, with a few new options.

Select “custom timeline” and follow along.

Add your newly named Twitter Custom Timeline to TweetDeck. Once it is added, fill in the description. Remember, what you name it and describe it will most likely be made publicly available at some point so keep that in mind.

Now this is where the magic happens. In this example, lets pretend that we are on the social media marketing team for Macy’s. Tomorrow is a huge day being that it is the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and everything, so we are going to create a custom Twitter Timeline to showcase some of the Tweets relating to this upcoming event.

Next, we launch a new search within TweetDeck with targeted keywords “Macy’s Parade” or something along those lines.

At this point, we are satisfied with the results since it appears there are 10’s if not 100’s of thousands of results to choose from, so we add the column to TweetDeck.

Now you should see 2 columns within TweetDeck all the way to the right: your Custom Timeline, and your search results.

From here, look for the “move” cross-arrows and drag those bad boys from the search column over to the Custom Timeline.

Rinse and Repeat. Find the Tweets that are the most relevant / interesting to what your goals are and add them to the timeline. Once you are satisfied with your Tweet compilation, you can now share, link, Tweet, or embed this Custom Timeline.

Within TweetDeck, find the “share” link within the Custom Timeline you want to share and navigate to the desired link.

By selecting “View on Twitter.com” this will allow you to link to your Custom Timeline, share it on other social networks, or Tweet it out to the world.

Endless Marketing Possibilities

This example only illustrates a very small portion of what can be done with Twitter and Custom Timelines. During this blog post I thought of a ton of really cool and creative ways to leverage this for fun and profit:

develop a Custom Timeline as part of an overall client report outlining mentions within the past week / month etc

use Custom Timelines to keep track of your own brand mentions

use Custom Timelines as a tool to measure post success

implement a Custom Timeline after a major sporting event to give an overview of highlights

create a Custom Timeline after a news event or catastrophe to create a historical reference of what transpired

Again, these were just a few ideas that I thought up during this process.

Only time will tell what this new feature will bring to the table, and I can’t wait to see more uses for Twitter Custom Timeline.

Patrick Coombe is the founder and CEO of Elite Strategies Llc. Patrick takes a hands on approach to managing Elite Strategies and loves to get involved with technical projects relating to clients inbound marketing needs.